The private security company formerly known as Blackwater is now the company formerly known as Xe Services . They recently announced their newest new name, Academi. The company changed its name to Xe in February 2009 after a 2007 mission...

When it comes to wordplay, I’m as big a fan of the portmanteau as the next person. (For those of you who don’t know, a portmanteau is a word formed by squishing parts of two other words together.) Snapple (snap...

One of the things I love most about the internet is the ability to support people I’ve never met and causes I would never have heard of, if not for, well, the internet. I microloan through Kiva; I answer questions...

When Heraclitus said, “the only constant is change,” perhaps he was talking about the telecommunications industry. The average lifespan of a cell phone these days is shorter than a mayfly’s; and the ever-shorter product lifecycle has caused a surge in...

Introducing, from one of the greatest brand names of all time (i.e., Yahoo!), Livestand, a powerful new digital publishing platform for news and media publishers and content hungry consumers (eh, it’s a cool new reader). If you own a phone...

Earlier this month, the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group introduced Dr. Pepper Ten, a version of its iconic soda targeted entirely at men, who apparently do not find normal diet soda sufficiently manly. The ten is a reference to the number...

Although it’s hard to remember a world without Gaga, she hasn’t been famous for all that long. In fact, she came on the scene in 2008 with her debut album The Fame. Although her first hit was “Just Dance”, I...

Today marks day 27 of the movement known as Occupy Wall Street. Initially conceived by the Canadian group Adbusters as a modest protest on Wall Street (and heralded with the hashtag #OccupyWallStreet), it has morphed into a “people powered movement...

I might be the last person on this planet with a fast internet connection and no Netflix account. And no, not even a trial membership (I’ve learned the hard way from many a magazine subscription -- which seem to be...